


Music Box

by querxes



Series: Music Box [1]
Category: Newsies - All Media Types, Newsies!: the Musical - Fierstein/Menken
Genre: Cross-Posted on Tumblr, Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Fluff, Fluff and Angst, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Sharing a Bed, Tinnitus, davey is annoyed and race just wants to help him sleep, we need more ravey and i mean it!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-06-10
Updated: 2020-06-10
Packaged: 2021-03-04 01:15:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,866
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24635188
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/querxes/pseuds/querxes
Summary: “Dave? Whaddaya still doin’ ‘wake?” Race blinked the sleep from his eyes against the warm candlelight from the bedside table. David was still sitting up in bed, book pages poised carefully toward the flame. Race turned over in the tiny bed.“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” Something was off about Davey’s tone. The words came out hard and aggravated. His voice was hoarse and the bags under his eyes highlighted his sleeplessness. His bare shoulders sagged with tiredness but were laced with tension, like the little strings stitching it together were straining against each other.
Relationships: Racetrack Higgins/David Jacobs
Series: Music Box [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1897576
Comments: 12
Kudos: 49





	Music Box

**Author's Note:**

> Hi! I recently revived my AO3 account so I will be posting some of my works cross-posted on Tumblr and other longer fics on this account!
> 
> This is based on my own personal experience with tinnitus. It affects some people differently and certain symptoms may vary. It was first ‘treated’ way back in ancient Egypt and many major societies knew about it, so I’m gonna say that it’s had a known name for a while now. (‘treated’ because a lot of them just poured liquid into people’s ears to try and cure it.) This is basically just me projecting my terrible ears onto Davey (and yes, I really did cry like this when I was little).

The sun set in the west long before the buzzing filtered into Davey’s head for the night. 

In fact, the buzzing was easy to ignore over the feeling of lightness in his chest, and so was the almost constant headache pressing into the sides of his head. He became so distracted by the sound of carrying laughter that it was impossible to listen to anything else in the moment. After they had finally fallen into silence, Race had fallen asleep very easily next to him in the cramped bed in Jack’s personal bedroom—the one Jack never used during the summer, the one he practically shoved Davey and Race into when Davey decided to stay the night—but Davey listened to the minutes pass with fading hope. He thought it would at least be easier to be lulled to sleep by a warm body cuddling into him, but the ringing continued to protrude into his hearing at an increasing volume.

The silence—or lack thereof—was just as unbearable as he remembered it being when he was a child. He remembered sleepless nights full of frustrated tears, of waking his dead-tired parents in the middle of the night, who tried to comfort him the best they could. He remembered watching the hands on the clock tick by with bleary eyes and aggravated fits that stretched across his chest and over the top of his head. He remembered crying harder and harder because this was the third night he had gone having fitful, leaning toward no sleep, and his mother was just too tired to help him anymore, so she just let him cry it out. It was then that David had realized that the crying was louder than the ringing, so he started to cry every night in an attempt to drown it out. 

The ringing first started way back in the days where the Jacobs lived across the ocean and could afford a doctor, and he gave the ringing a fancy name and a nonspecific explanation. It was called tinnitus, it was incurable, and it was likely caused by the frequent ear infections he suffered from when he was a baby and continued into his older years. The doctor couldn’t find a way to dispute David’s personal logic behind the crying, so his mother set out to find her own method. 

It came in the form of a music box, small and quiet and quaint, but David instantly fell in love with it. His best friend through the nights was no longer the sound of his own tears, but something that was lifetimes more pleasant. It was soft and twinkling, the wooden surface smooth in the palm of his hand, and he was content to keep winding and winding the box until he fell asleep. 

Sarah instantly accepted the music box with open arms, because anything was better than falling asleep to the sound of tears that you couldn’t justify quelling. Les was born and grew up listening to the sound, so he was used to it more than anything. His parents just wanted him to sleep through the night. David brought it with him across the ocean, but the crashing sound of the waves and the other children crying was enough to lull him to sleep on those nights.

Now Davey at the age of seventeen, no longer a helpless child, was close to tears once again for the first time in a very long time. The sound of Race’s soft snores wasn’t enough to cover the ringing no matter how he longed for them to be. He regretted leaving his tiny music box back home in their tenement. While David from hours ago had vehemently told himself he would survive one night without it, Davey from now was internally kicking himself. His attachment to the tiny music box seemed even more childish now than it did the night before.

There was no clock in Jack’s room, only Davey’s own perception of time passing by. The ringing seemed to get louder and louder the longer the silence prolonged, and when an hour (likely) passed by, he lit the candle on the bedside table and pulled out the book he had brought with him. He had lost track of the time and the achingly low buzzing by the time Race woke up and squinted against the soft light.

“Dave? Whaddaya still doin’ ‘wake?” Race blinked the sleep from his eyes against the warm candlelight from the bedside table. David was still sitting up in bed, book pages poised carefully toward the flame. Race turned over in the tiny bed.

“I’m sorry, did I wake you up?” Something was off about Davey’s tone. The words came out hard and aggravated. His voice was hoarse and the bags under his eyes highlighted his sleeplessness. His bare shoulders sagged with tiredness but were laced with tension, like the little strings stitching it together were straining against each other. 

Race sat up, clearly concerned, but Davey just ignored it and slammed his book shut so hard that it blew out the candle. He sighed. “Go back to sleep, Race.” He laid back down and Race didn’t stop him. Instead, the blond sat on his knees and sank to his hip away from the headboard. He leaned over Davey’s head, blocking out the moonbeams filtering through the open window with his back.

“Davey?” He asked again, not yet fully coherent. The other boy just stared up at him with an unreadable expression and his eyes flitted away guiltily. Race continued. “Davey-baby, what’s wrong?”

Davey shut his eyes.. “I thought I could do it,” he said, “I thought it would be fine just for one night.” Race’s eyes widened, and his heart dropped out of his chest. He sat back on his heels in shock.

“Dave, whaddya mean? Did I read all of this wrong?” He asked, voice raising in pitch. Davey’s eyes snapped open and he shook his head vehemently, shooting up in bed.

“No, no, Antonio, it has absolutely nothing to do with you,” Davey blushed a dark red under the moonlight. “There’s just—Ugh, it’s really hard to explain and not sound stupid.” He huffed out a self-deprecating laugh. Race frowned.

“Ya know I’ll never think ya sound stupid, Dave. Ever.” He reached for the spindly fingers fiddling with themselves and held them still, individually brushing the pads of his fingers over Davey’s fingertips. “If it’s hurtin’ ya like it is, I wanna help you with it.”

“It—It, uh, can’t really be helped.” Davey focused on playing with Race’s hands, smoothing over the rough calluses and stubbed nails. “I have something called tinnitus. It’s really more annoying than it is harmful. Uh… When it’s quiet, all you hear is silence, right?” Davey asked. 

Race thought for a moment. “Well, yeah, I guess,” he answered, getting increasingly confused. 

Davey sighed heavily, rubbing his tired eyes with the back of his hand. “I don’t really have that kind of silence. I hear a ringing noise sometimes, but most of the time it’s like buzzing. Not like a bug, but—it’s hard to describe, but I’ve had it since I was young,” said Davey. “It gives me a lot of headaches too. The doctor said it was from all my ear infections I had when I was a kid.” 

Race frowned. “So, you just hear ringing all the time?” He asked, still trying to wrap his head around it.

“Not all the time. Mostly just when it’s quiet, but sometimes it just starts happening for no reason, especially in my left ear. I’ve just—” he sighed. “I don’t like the quiet because of it. It makes it really hard to fall asleep. My ma—this sounds really dumb, but she found a music box for me to help me sleep. I don’t know how my family puts up with it, and I didn’t want to annoy you. I thought I could sleep without it for at least one night. Apparently I can’t. It’s just frustrating.”

Race thought for a moment. “Didja bring it? Honest, Dave, I don’t mind if you wanna listen to it. Really, I won’t be annoyed.”

Davey shook his head. “I left it at home.” He squeezed his eyes shut and refrained from slamming his palms over his ears, knowing all too well that it wouldn’t fix anything. He grew out of that habit when he was eleven years old.

Race hummed. “Hey, maybe d’ya want me to sing to you?” he asked softly. “I know it helped me when I used to have problems sleeping.” Davey stared at him in shock.  
“You would do that for me?” Davey asked, eyes glinting in the moonlight.

“‘Course I would, Dave,” Race smiled gently. “Y’know, when I was real little my Ma used to sing for me all the time. She used to say my brain was faster’n my body, ‘cause I never stopped thinkin’ at night. I kept her up so many times.” Race laid back down on the bed next to Davey, huffing out a gentle laugh at the memory. “Ain’t nothin’ to be ashamed of, havin’ problems sleeping.” Davey let out a tired sigh, feeling his eyelids droop in exhaustion. He nodded.

Davey flipped over onto his stomach and threw an arm over Race’s chest, gently pulling himself in closer until his torso was sprawled across Race’s. Race lifted his arm up and gently dragged the tips of his fingers up and down Davey’s back before going up his spine and working at the soft skin at the back of his neck. As the tension melted from Davey’s body, he lifted his hand up further to massage Davey’s scalp. Then, he began to sing. 

It was an Italian lullaby, something lilting and low and soft, softer than anything Davey had heard or seen from Race. He didn’t recognize the melody or the words, but it was warm and comforting. The foreign language helped him to not get caught on the words and their meaning, and he let himself sink even further into the embrace. The ringing quieted as his mind focused on the new and unfamiliar sound.

After the lullaby passed over and Davey was still vaguely conscious, Race whispered, “Hey, Dave?”

“Hmm?” Davey’s cheek was smooshed on Race’s chest, muffling and distorting the sound. Race chuckled gently.

“Is that—uh, that tiss, wait, how d’ya say it?”

“Tinnitus.” The word came out sideways, and Race tried his best to replicate the sound.

Race furrowed his eyebrows. “Is that tin-eye-tuss why you’s real jumpy, too? Like, the loud noises and stuff?” Davey huffed.

“I think that might just be a ‘me’ thing,” Davey slurred. Race laughed softly and started to sing again. He continued to hum and croon until Davey’s breathing evened out and his body became entirely slack. Race smiled and pressed a light kiss on Davey’s temple, letting his own eyes slip shut.

When Davey woke up the next morning, he realized how tired his hands had gotten from winding and winding and winding the music box every single night. He quickly concluded that it wouldn’t be long until he stayed with Race again.

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you enjoyed it!
> 
> Come yell at me on tumblr @thetruthabouttheboy or my main blog @querxes


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